


All We Can Ask of a Puzzle

by SoundandColor



Category: Elementary (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoundandColor/pseuds/SoundandColor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"I go where he goes, remember?"</i><br/> </p><p> <br/>For good or ill, Joan keeps her promises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All We Can Ask of a Puzzle

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoyed the darker tone of 1x12: _“M”_ and have decided to travel further down that rabbit hole. This goes AU during the episode and never looks back.  It answers the prompts _haptically_ , _checkmate_ and _secret_ for Porn Battle XIV. I want to thank my beta, [](http://random00b.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://random00b.livejournal.com/)**random00b** and assure you that they are awesome and all lingering mistakes are mine. I hope you all read and enjoy!

 

Sherlock’s very calmly standing in the waiting room when they get back to the precinct: his hands in his pockets, the toe of his left boot jiggling against the linoleum. Gregson points at him, says, “In my office. Now!” He even waits until the door’s tightly closed, before beginning to yell.

Joan stands outside, pacing, only catching snippets of a mostly one sided argument.

  


( _“… Where… our serial killer again?”_

_ “…Gave me the slip...” _

_ “.... “You apologize! … out on my streets doing god knows what because you decided to try and be a hero!” _

_ “If it makes any difference…he’ll be plying his trade around here anymore. Not with… and his picture floating around.” _

_ “Oh. So he’ll… Delaware or Jersey and start knocking off people…? Do you realize that you’ve aided and abetted a killer? … I’m going to be able to get you out of this, Sherlock. I don’t know if I even want to.” _

_ “Captain—” _

_“Get out of my office.”_ )

  


Gregson sounds weary and Joan can imagine his hand on his temple, the drawn look on his face. He’s been with Sherlock the longest (dealing with his mood swings and his drug use and Watson really can’t begin to imagine what _Sherlock on drugs_ must have been like). She knows he has a soft spot for the man but even he has his breaking points. Sherlock comes flying through the office door not a moment later, arms stiff and unmoving at his sides but she’s hot on his heels.

  


“Hey!” she calls out once then again. “Hey!” She finally grabs him by the sleeve when he refuses to acknowledge her and his head whips back in her direction. “What happened in there?” He looks down at her hand and she releases the fabric slowly. Joan doesn’t want him to just run off before she gets an answer. “Exactly what I told Captain Gregson. I had him but he got away. I have no idea where he is now.”

  


She studies him for a moment. “That’s the truth?”

  


“And nothing but.” He hasn’t given any of his usual tells: no narrowing of the eyes, no fidgeting and no bluster, but she knows he’s lying anyway.

  


\--

When she gets the text from Sherlock’s father saying he’ll no longer require her services past her contract date, she turns to watch his son sitting in front of the fireplace, staring at a Post-It note with one word he refuses to elaborate on no matter how much she pushes. She thinks of his face that night in the precinct, of Moran’s convenient disappearance and the NYPD’s subsequent inability to find him.

  


She’s thinking of what he said earlier that night ( _There’s a clarity to my thinking that is frightening_ ) as she walks upstairs and begins to pack.

  


\--

  


When she sees him again, it’s seven months and two patients later. He’s sitting upright in a hospital bed, medical packing in his nose and a ring of gore around the collar of his t-shirt. He doesn’t acknowledge her for long moments and while she usually doesn’t have time for his games, Joan lets the silence stretch. “You’re back, then?” he finally speaks. “I told Captain Gregson it wasn’t necessary to call—”

  


“He didn’t.” When she’d run into the man downstairs, he’d given her a surprised hello, outlined the situation ( _We caught a body that led us to an illegal fighting ring and Sherlock was being... Sherlock_ ) told her the room number and asked Joan to watch him while they went out on a call. “This is Carrie’s hospital. She called me when you were brought in.”

  


He looks around, quickly putting the pieces together and nods, shamefaced. “Ah yes. That’s quite an embarrassing thing to overlook for someone such as myself, but in my own defense, I was unconscious when they wheeled me up.” He turns toward her and she has to keep herself from wincing at the bruises on his face. She thinks he’s probably waiting for a reaction but she only crosses the room and picks up his chart.

  


He smiles a little. “So you and Carrie,” he threads the fingers of both hands together slowly before making the palms meet. “Healing the rift, yes?” She rolls her eyes, is about to say something when a nurse walks in with some papers, a pen, a clipboard and a smile. “Looks like your friend made it,” the woman says, handing him the forms.

  


Joan glances over at the bed, confused, but he misses it, already absorbed in the papers in front of him. The woman comes back toward her with two bottles of pills and some instructions Joan doesn’t need. She’s reading the labels when he speaks again. “Don’t worry, I refused the drugs. If the pain becomes unbearable I’ll take a Tylenol.”

  


The nurse barely reacts to their conversation and is out the door when an alarm goes off down the hall. “You knew I was coming?” It takes him a second too long to follow her shift in topic and Joan feels something catch in her chest. “No, I called Allistair, actually.” He climbs out of the bed and starts pulling on his coat and shoes gingerly. “But you’ll do well enough.”

  


“You still know exactly how to make a girl feel special.”

  


He grunts out a non-answer and they’re quiet as they make their way down to the lobby. They don’t speak again until they’re out on the street and Joan gets a good look at him. “Have you been sleeping?”

  


“Why wouldn’t I be?”

  


“Guilty conscience?” She’s not sure where the acidic retort comes from but there it is, out in the open between them, clogging up the already thick air with even more tension. She thinks he’s going to ignore it. Then he stops, spins toward her with his hands in pockets. “What would I have to feel remorseful about?” he asks, and she can hear the actual question behind them ( _still think I did something?_ ). “I sleep like a newborn baby.” The circles under his eyes and the sallow pallor to his skin tells another story but she lets it go. “So you’re just trying to get yourself killed then?”

  


Joan realizes then how much effort he's been exerting to just seem _interested_.To maintain that curiosity she’s always thought of as an integral part of him. When he finally meets her eyes, he looks exhausted, pale and sickly and one second from keeling over. “Don’t flatter yourself, I was on the road to self-annihilation long before you came and went from my life.” She doesn’t have anything to say to that and he turns to start walking when she stops him. “Look, there’s obviously some things we need to discuss. I’m going to hail us a cab then we can—”

  


“I feel like stretching my legs.”

  


“Where are you going?” She calls after him. “You have a concussion, you can’t be alone right now.”

  


“Since you obviously have no faith in my abilities even with serious head trauma, I’ll call Allistair or pay Theodore to keep me awake.”

  


“Sherlock?”

  


“Goodbye, Miss Watson.” She tries to think of something to say. Something that will bring them back to the place they were months ago ( _I think what you do is amazing_ ). Something that will make him trust her like he did then but nothing comes to mind. He waits until she finally nods, says, “Goodbye, Sherlock,” before turning to leave. _He’s not your responsibility anymore_ , she tells herself. _You tried your best_.

  


She can’t quite make herself believe it.

  


\--

  


Joan doesn’t make it seven months this time. She barely makes it six weeks before she’s at his door. He’s wrapped in a blanket when he answers her knock; doesn’t look surprised to see her either. “Nothing for almost a year and now two visits in as many months, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  


“Can I come in?”

  


He stands aside and she squeezes by him into the small front entrance. The house is messy, which isn’t too out of the ordinary, but the haphazard stacks of files, the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, the boxes stacked against the wall, the papers spread out across the floor throw off a strong whiff of _illness_ she never detected before. “Still not sleeping?”

  


He tilts his head to the side. “Still thinking on that?”  


  


“You’re not telling me something.”

  


“There’s that detective spirit, Watson! I feared it may have been drowned out by junky screams by now but it’s still breathing.”

  


“If only everyone could be so lucky.”

  
  


He gives her that look she’s seen him give other people. The one he hasn’t pointed in her direction since she helped solve their first case. That haughty, pointed stare that kind of makes her want to smack him. “It’s obvious you’re upset with me.”

  
  


“What did you do,” she asks, trying to read him but he’s being uncharacteristically tight lipped. “You’re not telling me something about that night.”

  


“Well why don't you tell me what I’m supposed to say. It seems like you already have it all figured out.”

  


“Do you know where Moran is?” She asks, frustrated. “Did you hurt him?”  


  


Sherlock walks toward the couch and takes a seat, leans back casually and the smug look on his face is gone. His eyes are hollow and dark, she notices how he’s lost even more weight since her visit to the hospital. “I was checked out by the NYPD and cleared.”

  


“That doesn’t answer my question.”

  


He shrugs, slow and easy. “We are both aware that it’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove. What would answering it do for you anyway? It won’t make you feel better.”

  


“How would you know?”

  


“Because I know you better than you think I do.” He states with certainty. “You think I’ve done something wrong. You want—no, _need_ to know what happened. You want to see me punished for it.” His words are straight forward enough but there’s something behind them. Some underlying fact that that makes her take a breath and start at the truth of it. The tension in the room shifts; her palms feel sweaty and she runs them against her tights. She can hear him breathing as his eyes follow the movement.  
  


“Maybe I was thinking of turning you into Gregson.”

  


“Already did that, remember,” he says, not unkindly. “What would be your accusation anyway? I haven’t admitted to anything and I’m an innocent man. It’s already been confirmed. But, if you like, I can assist you in achieving some sort of…closure.”

  


Watson knows what he’s offering. She has a hazy idea of how this is supposed to go, too. Sleeping with a former client. There would be a run in in an unexpected place, a few drinks, an alley leading to a quick encounter she’d do her best to forget the next day. She isn’t supposed to want it, she’s not supposed to be stone sober, this isn’t supposed to happen with him. It isn’t _supposed_ to happen at all.“What kind of assistance?”

  


He blinks, “any kind you deem appropriate.” Her first instinct is to shut him down immediately. To call him out for this, put some distance between them but the denials never come. _He’s not your patient anymore_ , a sly voice in the back of her mind pipes up. _You won’t be taking advantage. This isn’t wrong_.

  


“Shall I fetch the handcuffs then,” he asks, infuriatingly accurate at reading her thoughts. An image of him on his knees, hands behind his back, head bowed as he awaits her next instructions flits across her mind like a stone on still water. She almost says yes before thinking twice. It would be easy to let him let him lock himself up but self-denial has never been one of Sherlock’s issues, not when he’s decided that that’s what he wants. His problem is the opposite all together, indulgence: getting a taste of a drug and gorging himself, chasing down the answer to a puzzle no matter the cost to himself or the people around him, loving someone so much he’d destroy his second chance at life for revenge.

  


Letting him use the handcuffs, no matter how tempting, would be too easy.

  


“No,” she finally decides. “No handcuffs, no anything.”

  


He looks a little disappointed. “I thought this was punishment.”

  


“Who told you to speak?” Her voice is sharp, a low hiss that makes him snap his mouth shut as if she’s just pulled a trap. Joan feels a fission of heat race through her.She’s got as much of a god-complex as any former surgeon and this is beginning to push buttons she didn’t know she had. “When is the last time you changed your sheets?” She hurriedly adds, “you can answer.”

  


“A day or two ago.”  


  


She winces at the thought of the many disparate fluids that may have already accumulated on them but if they’re doing this ( _and really, there’s no if about it anymore_ ), it’s not going to happen on his ratty couch. She moves toward the steps and grabs the bannister. “Let’s go.”

  


\--  
  


Unlike the rest of the house, his room is tidy but bare. One side of the full-sized bed takes up the entire far wall. Add the trunk across from her into the mix and there isn’t much open floor space to spare. She wonders why he didn’t move into her old room and put the Apiary in here, so she asks. “Oh, um,” his eyes dart around before landing somewhere directly over her left shoulder. “I haven’t actually gotten around to moving the bees in yet. I’ve been occupied with other things.”  
  


“Mr. Post-It Note?”  
  


He doesn’t answer and she rolls her eyes. “Take off your clothes.” He does so without comment or fanfare, toeing off his sneakers first, then grabbing his shirt by the back of the collar and pulling it over his head before reaching for his jeans. Watson has always thought Sherlock was attractive in a strictly aesthetic way. He could do with a little more hair and little less forehead but he’s got other attributes: pretty blue eyes and a nice body she would listen to him working on every morning from her bed. She even likes the tattoos, which is something she’s never found herself attracted to before. They fit him.  
  


Now that she’s no longer his sober companion, she can legally ( _if not ethically_ ) show her appreciation of all the skin he’s uncovered and she does so with a lingering look. It's enough to make him preen and when he’s completely naked, he gets to his knees, drops his chin against his chest and she remembers exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. Joan moves to sit on the edge of his bed and starts pulling off her tights, watching him struggle not to move his head so he can get a better look. If she stretches, she can reach him, even hook her heel over his shoulder and tug him towards her, so she does. He shuffles forward and stops at the edge of the bed, between her legs.  
  


“Like I said earlier, I’m not tying you down. You can even touch yourself if you want, just don’t come.” He doesn’t raise his face but the tensing in his shoulders tells her he wants to ask a question. “Anything to say?”

  


“What about you? May I touch you all I like?” She leans back on her elbows and considers him. It would probably be better to say no, to make him suffer more in any way she can but ( _God help her_ ) she likes the idea of his hands on her. The thought of calloused finger tips sliding along her torso, of rough knuckles surrounding her nipple. “Yes,” she agrees, too breathy. “Anything else?”  
  


“What’ll happen if I do orgasm without your consent? If I can’t stop myself?”  
  


“I’m sure you’re aware of how sensitive you can be after orgasm. It can’t feel good to have to keep going, can it?”

  


His chest and neck flush a deeper pink at the thought of it and when she raises her hips toward him he immediately lowers his face and nips her inner thigh. He looks up and she can see the question in his eyes, nods as he begins to nuzzle upward and beneath her skirt. He sucks the gauzy fabric between her thighs and Joan lets out a shaky breath when he pushes it aside. In her weaker moments, she’s thought he’d probably be good at this. His desire to please along with his level of observational skills could only point in that direction. But thinking and knowing are still two very different things.

  


He wraps a hand around each of her calves and lifts them over his shoulders, drags her closer and he likes this. She can tell by the way he moves his tongue against her; by the way he hasn’t taken a breath since she signaled her readiness to begin. He bends her left leg in toward her chest before flattening it on the bed, opening her wider and giving himself more room to maneuver.

  


He started gently, measured licks interspersed with a gentle suction that’s slowly grown stronger. He’s building her up slowly. Dragging his palms along the inside of her thighs, spreading the sensations he’s spurring between her thighs with them. His palms glide down her legs, across the arch of her foot and back up to her abdomen before the waistband of her skirt stops his progress.

  


Joan takes a shaky breath, rocks her hips up harder and when she feels an edge of teeth against her clit, comes on a soundless moan, clutching his hair in her hand. She lets him continue on as she lies back, allowing herself to enjoy the afterglow before pushing him away and sitting back up. Sherlock's resumed his prior position: hands behind his back, head once again lowered. She looks between his legs at his dick, red and at attention, as she thinks over what to do next. 

  


She could leave him like this, panting and hard at her feet. She could pull him onto the bed, work him inside, fuck him until he makes her come again. She decides to split the difference and pats the bed bedside her. Sherlock climbs up and when she places her palms on his chest, he lets her push him flat on his back. Cupping her knee and sliding his hand up her thigh when she straddles him. Joan can’t remember the last time she… _well_ , she guesses she can’t call it dry humping but it’s close enough. She’s not even sure this will do anything for him when he’s probably used to a much rougher touch but she gets into position, rolls her hips against him once and stares down as he closes his eyes and turns his face to the side on a low groan. She does it again and he tentatively touches her waist, asking for more.

  


She rolls against him until she finds a perfect rhythm. Pulls his wrists above his head and shoves her thumbnail hard against his pulse point when he tries to change their pace. He makes a keening sound at the injury, shoves his hips up into hers he wants it so bad. Joan realizes then that she can make him do anything: keep him naked and tied to the bed, use him however she pleases, even make him bleed if she felt like it. “Yes,” he moans below her and for a moment she’s terrified she's spoken her thoughts aloud. Not because the words might scare him, knowing Sherlock he’d hand her the cuffs. The problem isn’t what he would think of her, it’s what they make her think of herself. She’s not a doctor anymore but she still took an oath. She still promised to never do harm. It’s defined her for so long she’s still trying to figure out who she is without it.  
  


More likely though, Joan’s simply over thinking it. He’s probably reading her like he's been doing all evening, reacting to some minute change he felt in her movements or her breathing or her heartbeat. The way he pulls her wrist to his mouth, licks the pulse point and forces her back into the moment, makes her jerk her hips faster, simply proves the point. 

  


She’s too wet to cause the friction they both need and it’s frustrating, being so close without going over. She bears down on him harder, moves faster. She thinks of how they would look if someone were to walk in, him naked on his back while she’s still fully clothed. She thinks of the tattooed woman from when they first met, the leather mask in the closet downstairs, the handcuffs he wanted her to lock him up in. She thinks of the twins, of the three of them in this room, on this bed, one on her back, sated and sleepy, lids heavy as she watches Holmes get to work on the other. She only realizes she’s sliding against him harder ( _digging her nails into his shoulder blades, calling blood to the surface_ ) when she hears a low moan coming from below her. Only when he arches back up against her with as much force as she’s giving him.

  


He comes a moment later without waiting for permission but she’s forgotten the rule anyway and Joan’s right on his heels, shaking with it, rutting against him faster. She’s completely unconcerned with how she looks or if she’s being too rough ( _if there’s such a thing when it comes to him_ ), trying to make this last and when it comes, this orgasm hits her harder than the first. The sharp edge of it making her clench tight and gasp, lean forward to press her chest against his, to hook her arms around him and get more leverage to circle her hips harder. To wring as much pleasure as she can before it slips from her grasp.

  


She breaths against him afterward, almost hugging him close, before she rolls off and lies next to him, shoulder to shoulder. He sits up a little and looks down at her, leans closer and, for a wild moment, she thinks he’s going to try and kiss her but he moves past her lips toward her ear and whispers, “Don’t worry. They’ll never find the body.”

  


There’s a stillness inside of her at his words, _his confession_. But this is what she wanted, _to know_ , and now she does. The question is, what is she going to do with the information. “I’m going downstairs,” he says, already standing at the door. She hadn’t even noticed he’d left the bed. He hangs by the frame a second too long, then turns on his heel and walks through it.

  


She can see her purse in her mind, somewhere downstairs, but his cell phone is plugged into the wall and within her reach. Joan knows what she’s supposed to do, what she’s supposed to _want_ to do, but feels no desire to reach for it. No need to call the police or _do the right thing_. She’s satisfied. More content than she’s been since a patient during a routine surgery flat lined and threw her world into a tail spin. She knows that this is enough. That just knowing the truth is enough and she's not sure what that means.

  


He comes back 20 minutes later with two glasses of water and two mugs smelling of marinara. “Your famous Spaghetti cups?”

  


“Only the best for my guests.” They eat in companionable silence for a long while before Sherlock decides he needs to try and fill it. “No sirens outside the house. No large men pounding on our door.” She notices his word choice but doesn’t comment on it. “They wouldn’t be able to prove it, of course, but I thought—last time you—“

  


“Last time I was too late to stop you before you did something stupid. This time, I have a head start. ”

  


His face drains of whatever good humor he was feeling and goes completely flat. "I’m going to kill him, Watson.”

  


“I’m not going to let you.” He studies her and she stares back as he finally begins to smile. “I don’t think so, but it’ll be entertaining to see you try.” She scoffs at his certainty before thinking about what they’re discussing so flippantly. A man’s life (Sherlock’s desire to end it and Joan’s desire to stop him), an illegal action she could be charged with being an accessory to if she isn’t able to actually keep the man alive.

  


It’s not that she doesn’t care about what Holmes did ( _shedoesshedoesshdoes_ ) she just needs to protect her friend more. She needs to solve the puzzle. _She needs to know_. That knowledge doesn’t scare her or even make her reconsider what she’s committing herself to. She thinks of him that night again, about that frightening clarity he described. She realizes she just might understand what he meant.

  


“I’d remind you of what a bad man he was if I thought the morality of the thing was what’s bothering you,” Sherlock says, trying for casual and almost succeeding. “But that’s not quite it, is it?”

  


Instead of answering a question he already knows the answer to, she asks him something herself. “Why did you do it? He didn’t kill Irene so why?”

  


“He was still a murderer,” Sherlock declares. “He killed—“

  


“This isn’t a trial so you can cut the closing argument short and just tell me the truth.”

  


He stretches and for a moment she thinks he’s not going to answer when he looks out of the window, giving her his back, and says softly, “I already did.”

  


She searches her mind before settling on a memory of them sitting on a couch, his eyes wet ( _he presumed to know me_ ). “I want to know your plan,” she says suddenly. “For all those boxes in the kitchen and for Mr. Post-It Note, too.”

  


“Ah,” he says, taking a slow drink of water, setting the glass on the night stand and lying down on his back next to her. “Moriarty, yes. He’s a bit of problem.”  
  


She’s going to help him solve it.


End file.
